by
Les May
THE
day after Jeremy Corbyn
was elected leader of the Labour party on 12 September 2015 the BBC
showed its filmed
production
of J.
B. Priestley’s
1945
play An
Inspector Calls
which has been seen by some people as
a call to British
society to take more responsibility for working-class people.
Certainly
this is how I read the play. It
is calling for a shift in attitude, but it’s not a prescription for
how it can be achieved.
I
grew up in the 1950s, a time when that shift in attitude had to a
significant degree been
achieved.
My dad was in hospital and we lived on National Assistance
introduced
by the Atlee government in 1949.
Unlike today my mum was
not made to feel like a
scrounger.
Many of the scribblers who write the opinion pieces in our
newspapers are too young to remember that world. They are
‘Thatcher’s
Children’
and
since her
election in 1979 the centroid of politics has shifted to the Right,
so they view any move
away from that centroid as Left wing extremism and swallow the myth
that the Social
Democracy
which
underpinned those years was
a failure.
It
did not fail. It was ruthlessly destroyed by Thatcher and her
followers in
pursuit of their own interests.
Whilst
older
people like me have been
attracted to
‘The
Corbyn Project’
because
they
want to see the more caring world I experienced as a child restored,
other,
younger people have been attracted by what they see as his
willingness to break with the Blairite legacy they grew
up with and promote an alternative vision of society.
Labour’s
ranks have been swelled by younger people joining the party and older
people rejoining it.
These are the people who re-elected him when, in 2016, the win in
the EU
referendum by the Leave campaign led to the spurious claim that he
was to blame for not campaigning hard enough.
In
fact he was much more successful in persuading Labour voters of the
virtue of staying in the EU
(60% voted Remain)
than Cameron was in persuading Tory voters (60% voted Leave).
I
can see much the same scenario building as we approach 29 March 2019.
This is what Andrew
Rawnsley
had to say in The
Observer
last Sunday;
‘The
Labour leader is not making any effort
to prevent Brexit because he doesn’t want to prevent Brexit. The
conclusion for Labour supporters
ought to be clear. If they want another referendum, they will have
to rebel against him.’
It’s
not difficult to spot the non
sequitur
here.
There is absolutely no guarantee that the result of a second
referendum would be different from the first. Rawnsley wants Labour
supporters who don’t want to leave the EU, and I’m one of them,
to think it would. From there it’s only a short step to
saying, ‘It’s
Corbyn’s fault we left the EU because he did not call for a second
referendum’
if
we do in fact leave.
Corbyn’s
unwillingness, so far at least, to call for a second referendum is
a
principled stance. As I have written before when I voted to Remain
in the EU
I assumed that result would be honoured.
But
I doubt that the people in the Labour party who have tried to get rid
of him once will see it that way.
I
think
Corbyn’s unwillingness to commit Labour prematurely to a definite
policy with regard to leaving the EU
has been shrewd because it makes it difficult for Labour’s enemies
to attack it. At some time it will have to be clarified. Or will
it?
As
things stand there does not look like a majority of MPs in the House
of Commons who will vote to
leave.
If there isn’t then perhaps Theresa May will feel she has to call
a second Referendum. That would let Corbyn off the hook, May
would
get
all the flak and Jeremy would
be seen as the man who respected the voters wishes.
That
certainly would not do him any harm in an election.
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